Chapter 22: A Hairy Little Christmas
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
As the term ended, the sky blanched a white so clear it was almost iridescent, and a gilt of glittering snow erased the muddy grounds. Strains of Christmas music floated through the halls, and the Charms classroom hung with enchanted illusions of real fairies. Thoughts turned toward vacation plans, and on the last day of term, the faculty elected to dismiss classes at noon, rather than struggle through the illusion that anyone was still paying attention.
The last weeks of Defense Against the Dark Arts were strange. Watching Lupin lead a class exercise, calm and dignified in his professor’s robes, Draco could simply not imagine it was the same man he had seen emerge naked from the tattered bed in the Shrieking Shack. He wondered, a bit wildly, whether the gaggle of girls who trailed him at speed through the hallways would react the same way if they knew his secret — and then he wondered who else knew. Snape was brewing his Wolfsbane Potion, at Dumbledore’s behest, so there were at least two on the faculty. But did McGonagall know? Sprout? Hagrid? Surely not Hagrid; the giant couldn’t keep a secret to save his mother’s life.
Harry, meanwhile, started to hang back after class in D.A.D.A. These chats with Lupin would only last for fifteen or twenty minutes, and he would come hurrying in late to lunch, making excuses for the delay, as if they didn’t know exactly what had kept him. Draco would have begrudged him nothing except the flimsiness of the excuse, but he did wonder what all the two were doing, once everyone else left. There couldn’t possibly be that much to say about one’s parents, could there?
But when Hermione — whose curiosity could be relied on to conquer her tact — finally plucked up the courage to ask him, Harry surprised them all.
“He’s helping me with dementors,” he said. He examined the architecture of a towering BLT, deemed it wanting, and added another floor of bacon. “I asked him to help me stop, er…”
“Swooning like a girl?” suggested Ron helpfully. A sprinkle of enchanted snow from the Great Hall ceiling piled on his shoulder, and he flicked it off.
“Passing out, yeah, thanks.”
“Is there a way to stop them?” said Draco curiously. “I thought they couldn’t be killed.”
“Can’t kill them. There is a spell you can do to ward them off, a bit,” said Harry, mortaring mustard. “It’s complicated, though. Sirius did it, when he rescued us, and Lupin can do it, too, but it’s hard to pull off.” He gave them a rough account of the Patronus Charm.
“A happy memory?” said Hermione, intrigued. “That’s all? Why, that’s easy.”
“You think?” said Harry, a bit tartly. “Try pulling one when you’re staring down seven feet of misery in a cloak, and get back to me.”
“Oh, could I?” she said, missing the point spectacularly. “Would he mind? I wouldn’t want to intrude. But if he’s already teaching you…”
“Merlin,” said Ron. “Term’s only just finished, and you want more homework already?”
“Actually, no,” she said. Draco choked on a bit of potato. “I’m worried — clear your throat. Do you need a napkin? — I’m worried about the amount that we’ve already got. I started on some of it this morning, and I don’t think we’ll have time to do that and the Charms essay and the practice potion Snape’s assigned unless we pull a double-shift on Boxing Day…”
“That’s it,” said Ron, standing up. “We’re going to see Hagrid.”
“Why?”
“Because you need to be removed as far from any all books as possible, and I want to talk him out of giving us homework.”
Meanwhile, the rest of the castle waxed festive near Christmas. Coronets of holly and mistletoe wreathed each window, and the Great Hall sprouted twelve stout Christmas trees, bedazzled with rhinestones and popcorn garlands. A group of students had lit a twelve-foot menorah at the foot of the faculty table earlier in December, and it was left there, decked with red bows, even though Hanukkah had passed. In the Great Hall, seven candles the size of Douglas firs rested on a dais near the entrance, three red, three green, one black. The smell of roast goose and baking bread filled the castle at all hours as the kitchens threw themselves into preparing the feast. Draco watched it all with the curiosity of a first year. He had never stayed at Hogwarts over the holidays before. Now and then he thought about the Manor at Christmastime, and how the snow piled on the gables, and the enchanted topiaries bounded around like deer in the fresh snow, and felt homesick for it. But these thoughts were increasingly few and far between, especially because he had so little time by himself in which to think them. It was astonishing how often there was something happening in Gryffindor Tower, now the term was done: either Fred and George were making a pilgrimage to the kitchens, or Seamus was offering to trade cassettes; Hermione wanted to review their Charms homework, or Angelina and Harry wanted to squeeze in an extra quidditch practice, or Ginny wanted them to teach her to fly chaser. Altogether, he spent more hours on his feet during the holidays than he did during term.
On Christmas morning, Draco woke first, sleepily, to the sound of doves cooing in the eaves, and several moments later, fully, to a pillow in the face.
“Presents!” roared Ron, scrambling back to his bed before Draco could reply in kind. “Geddup! Geddup, Harry! Presents!”
The Boy Who Lived was fumbling with his glasses. At the foot of their beds sat heaps of parcels in wrapping paper and twine. Draco found, to his satisfaction and slight embarrassment, that his pile was the largest and most numerous of any in the room.
A tap came at the door. “Are you decent?” Hermione called, muffled, and Ron bounded over to open the door.
“Close enough! Come in.”
“Merry, merry.” She wore a fluffy pink bathrobe and fuzzy slippers, and her hair was pinned up. She carried an armful of presents, and bustled around the dorm, handing out. “Ron, that’s for you. And Harry… Draco, there you go…”
It was just as he’d hoped: three new cassettes of muggle music, with little notes in her neat scrawl explaining who they were. He tucked them carefully away beside his Walkman, which he kept in a velvet purse in his bedside table, positively swaddled in anti-theft enchantments.
“Cheers, Granger,” said Draco happily. He ducked under his bed, and retrieved her present from its dusty, top-secret confines behind the skirt. “Merry Christmas.”
“You didn’t have to,” she said, but he could tell she was pleased.
“Go on, open it, then.”
She did, peeling away the leaves of tissue paper, and shook out a long tyrian peacoat, with shiny gold buttons and lining of black silk. She gasped.
“But this must have been expensive!”
“Hardly, it’s not even custom,” he said. “Now you needn’t wear those ridiculous muggle clothes when it’s cold out. Check the box.”
A set of Swiss caramels hid under the last layer of wrapping. She gave a coo of delight, and sat down on his bed to tear them open at once.
Ron had demolished half of his pile already. “Sweater, from Mum,” he said carelessly, tossing something hideous and maroon onto the bed behind him. “Bet you’ve got one, too, Harry.”
Harry had. So, to his surprise, had Draco, who unearthed a shaggy woolen sweater in sea-green, with a white lion stitched into the back.
“Oh, she used the good yarn, for you,” said Ron enviously. “The twins and I always get stuck with the colors she can’t get rid of, after she’s done Bill and Charlie and Dad.”
“That wasn’t necessary,” said Draco, surprised. He shook it out, found it more or less fitted to his measurements, and shrugged it on. The wool was pilly, and somewhat loose around the shoulders, but it was perfectly warm. “I like it,” he decided. “Weasley, what’s your address? I’ll send a thank-you note.”
“Don’t you dare,” hissed Ron. Draco smirked and hocked a pack of nut brittle at him.
They dawdled so long over presents that by the time they made it down from the dorms, it was almost midday. The Gryffindor table piled high with a mountain ridge of griddlecakes, crowned by peaks of syrup and powdered sugar. Ron and Hermione competed to see who could construct the most horrifying monument to tooth decay, and then annihilated them with similar grace, giggling when they got powdered sugar on their noses and in their hair. Fresh snow lay in a blanket over the lawns, spotted by looping chains of footprints and several snowmen of various elaborateness, including a full-scale, architecturally sound reconstruction of the Tower of Pisa undertaken by a club of Ravenclaw seventh years. After breakfast, the four of them went on a tour of the snow menagerie, and a small argument broke out over the tower’s construction: Hermione remarked that it was listing several degrees too far, and Draco asserted that it was not, merely settled on a hill, and they got into an argument about whether or not one measured the radial angle from sea-level or the foundation, and ultimately agreed that they could not settle the question without building their own to find out.
While the two of them bickered and sniped at each other over blueprints, Harry and Ron built a lumpy, hunch-backed snowman of their own. The miserable creature wore a threadbare wig of willow leaves, and had a pair of V-shaped twigs for eyebrows. Ron called it “Snowpe.”
Flushed and wet from snow, they tramped back up to the common room when the sun started going down, and dressed for the party.
Fred and George had promised a shindig, and Gryffindor parties never failed to deliver. Out of respect for inter-house unity, and fear of Percy’s legendary scoldings about messes in the Common Room, they held it in the Astronomy Tower. To prevent it being shut down, twins had negotiated a cautious ceasefire with the faculty on condition that only third years and up would be in attendance, so they were met at the entrance by Lee Jordan in a beefeater hat and a long fake beard.
“PASSWORD,” he bellowed, flinging his arms over the door. Music thumped from behind him, and laughter.
“Oh c’mon, Lee, it’s us,” said Ron.
“WRONG!”
“You know us! I’ve been sleeping two doors down from you for three years!”
“Also WRONG,” boomed Lee. “Here is a HINT! It rhymes with ‘WHEEZE’!”
“Please?” said Hermione, politely.
The door swung open abruptly, and Fred poked his head out. Glitter dusted his hair, and he wore a pair of antlers on a headband. “God bless,” he said fondly. “It’s ‘feces.’” He handed Lee a red plastic cup of punch. “Go on and let ’em in, anyway, Jordan. Except for that redhead, I don’t like the look of him.”
“I’m your brother!”
“No wonder, then.”
“CORRECT,” intoned Lee, and stepped aside.
He opened the door into a sea of bodies and twinkling lights. The Astronomy Tower had decked out in fairy lights and chiffon streamers, and filled with loud muggle Christmas music; at least, Draco assumed it was muggle (some breathy-voiced man was whining about ‘last Christmas’ to a profusion of synths). Every student left in the castle had attempted to cram themselves into the Tower. Lavender Brown and the Patil twins were perched on a table, sipping cups of punch, wearing short little skirts with white fluffy trim. Oliver Wood and Roger Davies, tied neck and neck for the ugliest sweater in attendance, were having a profound, philosophical, and indelibly drunken debate in the corner. And dancing happily on a tabletop, swaddled in enough knitwear to warm a legion, was — Draco startled in pleasant surprise — Dobby the house-elf, holding a fingerbowl of butterbeer.
“Merry Christmas, Mister Draco!” he squeaked. He was obviously a bit tipsy. He threw his arms around Draco’s neck, and then whisked up his sleeves, showing off a row of elaborate hair ties and bows running from wrist to elbow. “It is so good to be seeing you! You are growing more handsome every year! Dobby is sorry he is not visiting, but he is having many adventures with his new friends, and is always working hard on kitchen duty. Spratt is having him guard the pantry, since this year there is always someone sticky-fingered trying to sneak around — but look! Dobby has found more crunchies!”
Hermione giggled. “That’s nice, Dobby,” she said. She pulled a blue one from her wrist, and offered it to him. “Would you like one more? Merry Christmas.”
“Grain Jar!” cried Dobby. “Thank you, thank you! Merry Christmas!”
He gifted them both aluminum tins full of ice cream — “Dobby has made it himself! Haggis flavor, you are not finding it nowhere else!” — and bobbed off to dance with some of the other kitchen elves. Hermione cracked hers, sniffed it, and turned a verdant shade of green.
A bowl of something bright blue and sparkling sat on a table with some Christmas cookies and snacks. Draco could have clocked it as alcoholic at fifty yards, merely by its context, but when they got close enough to smell it, his suspicions were pungently confirmed.
“Eugh, jungle juice,” said Ron, sniffing his cup. “You could clean bedpans with this stuff.”
“But that’s illegal,” said Hermione, scandalized. “We’re all underage!”
“Butterbeer’s alcoholic, technically,” said Draco idly, scanning the crowd. The bulk of the party was Gryffindors, with a respectable showing of Hufflepuffs and Ravenclaws, but he had yet to spot any green ties. He had mentioned the party to Theo in passing, about a week ago, but he didn’t know if he would remember, or if he’d come, even if he did. He wasn’t quite sure what had propelled him to do it; perhaps it had occurred to him, on some level, that Theo had so far invited Draco to two parties, and he’d yet to repay the invitation.
“In traces,” Hermione sniffed. “This smells like moonshine. Look! That person is drinking vodka!”
“What, neat?”
“Is this normal?” she hissed at him, whaling on his sleeve. “Is underage drinking part of Wizarding culture? I didn’t read about that, anywhere!”
“Yes,” he said gravely. “I’m afraid you’re witnessing the practice of a time-honored tradition, sacred to our culture. It’s been venerated by our people since the beginning of time.”
“Purebloods?”
“Teenagers,” he said.
They took sparkling ciders and struggled their way over to a table. The music changed to a jazzy, syncopated standard about a sleighbound vagrant called Zanna Claws, and people took the slower song as a break for drinks. A fourth year in a short red dress pressed out of the crowd and tapped Harry on the shoulder. “Hi,” she shouted. “D’you want to dance?”
Harry spit juice back into his goblet. “Oh,” he said, fumbling it back to the table. “Um, I don’t know how. Sorry.”
“Well, that’s okay,” she said, twisting her fingers nervously. “I don’t either, really.”
“You don’t?” said Harry, baffled. “Why’d you ask, then?”
Draco and Ron both seized with twin spasms of grief. Hermione, hand sealed over her mouth, heaved with silent laughter.
The poor girl faltered. “Oh,” she said. “Sorry. If you don’t want to—”
“No, no,” said Ron firmly, kicking Harry to his feet, “he does. Ignore him, he keeps his brain in the quidditch locker—”
“Oy!”
“—but he’d love to dance, honest. Just take the lead, he’ll get the picture. Go on, Harry,” he added, as Harry, wild-eyed, stumbled to his feet. “Make a friend, eh?”
Smiling shyly, the girl took his hand and led him to the dance floor. Harry stared at Ron over his shoulder, begging wordlessly for help.
“Poor Harry,” laughed Hermione. “You steamrolled him.”
“Nah. It’ll be good for him. About time he threw one of those girls a bone.”
“One of them?” said Draco suddenly. “You don’t mean to tell me there are girls, plural, afflicted with some incomprehensible measure of — feelings, for Potter?”
“Oh, yes,” said Hermione serenely, and her lack of surprise disturbed him even more. “He’s quite popular in the girls’ dorm. Parvati had a mean crush on him, in first year; and of course, there’s Ginny.”
“Who we think’s in recovery,” advised Ron. “Still claims he’s fit, though. Blech.”
“But — but—” Something toothy in the back of Draco’s head pricked up its ears. “But he’s scrawny. And doesn’t dress. And he never brushes his hair.”
“So?” said Hermione, amused. “You’ve seen pictures of muggle rockstars, haven’t you? It’s in style.”
On instinct, he touched his own carefully gelled coif of hair. “Maybe for muggles, it is,” he said dourly.
This opened up a world of possibilities both daunting and novel. Did Ron have a crush, too? Hermione? Did she stay up at night, dreaming of boys with shaggy hair and too many rings? That felt dreadfully out-of-character, and somehow disappointing. He gave her a skeptical once-over — she sipped her pumpkin juice, placid in her ignorance — and reassured himself that he would have heard about it. Hermione couldn’t hide her feelings to save her life. Draco hadn’t any crushes; maybe that put him behind the curve. The whole business felt horridly premature.
“Granger,” he said suddenly, shaken to the core by the most wretched idea of all.
“Hm?”
“You don’t have a crush on Potter, do you?”
He glared at her suspiciously. She stared back, jaw agape, and then burst into laughter.
“No!” she exclaimed. “He’s — why, I don’t — Harry? Me? He’s like my brother!”
“That’s what they always say,” said Ron sagely, rendering Draco aghast.
“You can’t,” he told her severely. “Granger, I mean it. You’re forbidden from having a crush on Potter. I won’t allow it.”
“You won’t allow it,” she repeated, amused. “Okay. Well, if I detect any touchy-feely sensations, I’ll be sure to file a permit application with your office.”
“Seriously. For your own good.”
“Oh, and I do appreciate it, really. What about Ron? Is he out of bounds too?”
“Mione, I’m flattered, but it would never work out between us,” said Ron, putting a hand to his breast. “It’s me or the cat, and I know where I stand.”
“Shut up,” she laughed, and went to get another cookie, putting welcome end to an altogether vexing conversation.
Harry staggered back to the table after two songs, sweaty and too discombobulated to give a thorough report. “She was sort of, like — handsy,” he said at length, upon a full press from Draco and Ron. “She kept trying to, er… put her head on my shoulder.”
“What was her name?” inquired Hermione.
He blinked at her, stone-faced. “You know,” he said, “I didn’t find out.”
“Harry!”
“Oy, Draco!” called George. He was standing by the door, one foot out, one foot in. “These three weirdos out here claiming you invited them.”
“What?”
George stuck his head out the door, conferred briefly, and reappeared. “Do you know anyone called Theodore Snot?” he said loudly. “Or Dagny Green Ass?”
“Let them in, they’re with me,” he said hurriedly, springing up. George reluctantly opened the door.
“You’re killing me, Blondie,” he added, as the three new guests trailed in. “Slytherins? Really?”
“They won’t cause trouble.”
“Trouble is fine,” said George severely. “Trouble is good.” He gave Theodore — looking thoroughly out of place in a black suit and tie — a stern glance. “Bullies get hoisted upside-down by their panties from the Tower rafters.”
Draco went tense, anticipating friction. But the bait was left untouched.
“Noted,” said Theo calmly. “Let me know if you find any, that sounds fun.”
George stared at him. Then he turned to Draco, pained.
“And don’t let him near me,” he ordered, pointing at Theodore. “If I start to like him, I’ll be so mad, you’ve got no idea.”
He disappeared into the crowd, presumably to go deal with another group demanding entrance.
“Really feeling the Gryffindor hospitality,” remarked Theo, sliding his hands into his pockets. “You lot do know how to throw a party, though it’s not quite the atmosphere I’d have chosen.”
“It’s splendid,” said Daphne, who had dressed to absolute murder in a silver evening gown and heavy bangles. Her hair swept into a chic chignon at the base of her neck, and she compensated for the lack of crutches by leaning on the arm of their third member — who was not, Draco realized with a start, their usual counterpart. It was a short, willowy Slytherin with a close-shaven head like a small brown egg, and voluminous hazel eyes, ringed in gold eyeliner.
“Blaise Zabini,” he said smoothly, extending his hand. “It’s nice to meet you. My mother is Tatiana Ortelagn neé Zabini. Neé Septimus. Neé Mountbatten—”
“Quick, Draco, introduce yourself, or we’ll die here,” drawled Theo. Blaise smiled at him sweetly, and lifted his middle finger.
“Draco Malfoy. Obviously.” He shook hands. “At the risk of being rude,” he added, “not that it’s not nice to meet you, Zabini—”
“Pansy’s home for the holidays,” explained Daphne. “She sends her regrets, though. She’d really rather be here.”
“And the thing is, she’s not even lying,” said Theo. “Muggle music and all. Poor thing. We’ll have to kidnap her, one of these days, I need the other half of my brain back… anyway, I hope you don’t mind we’ve sprung Blaise on you, but he was simply rabid to meet Harry Potter.”
“Liar,” purred Blaise. “I was conscripted. You told me Daph needed a date.”
Daphne’s face did a strange thing, and she swept her fringe quickly behind her ear. It was a movement so uncharacteristically awkward that Draco frowned at her, but no one else seemed to notice, least of all Theo, who shrugged. “I like an entourage,” he said. “It makes me feel important. Let’s say hello, anyway, and be polite. I shouldn’t like to end up in the rafters.”
He brought them back to the table of Gryffindors. Harry stood up, ever courteous; Ron, after a long, long pause, did the same. Hermione said awkwardly, “There’s not — we need a chair—” and darted off to get one.
There was a lot of inelegant scuffling around as they arranged themselves, trying to avoid stepping on each other’s toes, and nobody quite seemed to know what to say to each other.
“Hello, again,” said Ron to Theo, surprisingly civil. “Nott. Good to see you. And Greengrass, isn’t it? I like your bracelets.”
Daphne beamed. “Thank you, Ronald,” she said. “You’re a darling.”
“If we’re on first names, you’d better call me Ron,” he said. “My mum’s the only one who calls me Ronald.”
Draco was briefly glad of Ron’s random and incandescent strokes of good form, which always seemed to fall when you least expected them.
“Introductions,” Draco barked, finally finding his voice. “Blaise, you don’t know anybody yet. This is Harry Potter. Boy Who Lives, mostly for lack of trying, second best player on the Gryffindor team. To the left: Ronald Weasley, of the Devon Weasleys, who if he weren’t a champion pighead of a Cannons fan might not be an entirely deplorable man to talk to about quidditch. Next—”
“I can introduce myself, Draco, really—”
“—Hermione ‘Eat My Dust’ Granger, so-called for the invisible annotation in the class ranks, probably the only reason McGonagall hasn’t offed herself yet. Ask about her favorite book, if you’ve got a few years to kill.” He turned to the table. “Did I miss anything?”
“Hullo,” said Harry.
“Cheers,” said Ron.
Hermione said primly, “It’s nice to meet you.”
Theodore nodded, listening, and then held out an arm to his companions, presenting them. “Daphne Greengrass,” he said. “A.K.A. ‘The Face,’ eldest scion of the Wiltshire Greengrasses, loather of school, lover of cats. The smirk that launched a thousand ships.” He moved his hand. “Blaise Zabini, A.K.A. ‘The Egg,’ everyone’s favorite accident, stands to inherit about six different castles, if any of you are in the business of gold digging. He likes strawberries and long walks on the beach.”
“Six?” said Ron faintly.
Blaise wiggled his hand. “Last one’s more of a villa.”
Ron set down his goblet, hard.
“Like to go out some time?”
Blaise grinned at him.
“Do you have any cats?” said Hermione to Daphne, leaning over the table.
“Two. Duchess and Princess, four and six. Colourpoint Persian and Sphynx purebreds, respectively.”
“Very nice,” said Hermione politely. “I have a red one. His name’s Crookshanks.”
“Marvelous,” said Daphne appreciatively. “Is he fat?”
“A bit plump, maybe.”
“Excellent.”
“Draco,” murmured Theo, leaning into his ear, “I regret to inform you that the cross-cultural exchange is going alarmingly well. We must reintroduce house tensions posthaste. Quick, say something stupid and melodramatic.”
“I’m Theodore Nott. I like an entourage, it makes me feel important.”
“Pratt,” exclaimed Theo, though Draco refused to apologize for taking the obvious shot. “Now I can’t say something clever and subtly bigoted in rejoinder. We’ve missed our chance.”
Draco held his tongue between his teeth. He thought about asking Theo what he’d been doing in Hogsmeade, with the two wizards outside the pub — nefarious or not, all the slinking-around made him want to be wary of Theo on principle — but he couldn’t think to explain how he knew about it, and frankly, his chances of getting a straight answer were slim, anyway. At any rate, Theo kept his own business. If he had certain shady connections, well, he couldn’t help his father’s politics. It didn’t mean there had to be anything insidious about it.
A triple harmony of laughter broke out from Harry’s side of the table, where he held Blaise and Ron spellbound, trying to explain his uncle’s occupation. “No, it’s real,” Harry was saying, struggling not to laugh, “it’s a thing you hold in your fist, and then you turn it on, and the bit drills into — into whatever you’re trying to bore through — Ron, stop, I’m trying to — to explain—”
“Drills in, does it?” said Blaise delightedly, twirling his index finger. “This long, pointy appendage? Penetrates things?”
“Right. So it spins, and you push it in—”
“You push it in?” hooted Ron. He and Blaise elbowed each other excitedly. “You push it in!”
“Quickly, or slowly?” demanded Blaise, rapt.
“It — I don’t know, I’ve never used one—”
“No?” said Ron thickly, knuckling his mouth. “Makes one of us — I use mine all the time—”
“Gross,” Harry said, grinning, while Blaise shrieked and threw his head onto Ron’s shoulder. “Actually gross. What are you, nine?”
Meanwhile, Daphne and Hermione had burrowed into the arcane science of cat pedigrees. Hermione was listening intently as Daphne conducted an energetic tour of the European breeding genealogies, with enough detail to fill a dissertation. In a stroke of extraordinary luck, Draco thought, she had found perhaps the one person in the castle, nigh Britain, who would remember every word.
For the next hour, Draco played little part in the conversation. The combined forces of the other six churned the conversation into a rip current, which swept back and forth depending on the vivacity and energy of a given party. Theo and Ron traded relays of barbed remarks across the table, an elegant dance up to the very knife-edge of rudeness without crossing it, though undercut by the distracting cross-current of Blaise and Hermione’s attempt to have a perfectly genial conversation about Middlemarch. Daphne performed a brief, abortive attempt at seduction on Harry that failed emphatically on every cylinder, and served to amuse everyone at the table, which was obviously the point. Draco watched the strange social ecosystem thrum to life, pleased and a little amazed, for though none of them seemed to quite trust each other — and though more than a few jabs crossed the line from poking to piercing — the animal families of snakes and weasels suffered a great deal of metaphorical abuse — the bonds of courtesy held fast. They strained, and whined, and sometimes splintered, but they never broke, and so the fourteen-legged creature at the table staggered forward in their arms, miraculously alive.
He liked Blaise, though after watching him, he decided he was too much like Theo. He had a native fluency in tact that made him an unflappable conversation partner, and yet was somehow still capable of enormous earnestness, a combination that only ever came from remarkable self-confidence, as if he had seen the rotten depths of himself and had not been unsettled in the least. He reminded Draco a little of Narcissa.
Theo, too, was in rare polite form, going so far as to compliment Hermione’s sweater (it was not good) and tell her he was glad to hear she had made a full recovery from last year.
“It was the strangest thing,” he said, “I’d spent all those months waiting for top ranks in Transfiguration, and once I got there, I found it didn’t suit me at all. There was all this pressure to do everything perfectly, instead of simply do well — just ghastly. Never don’t be the best again, Granger, I insist on it.”
“Thanks,” she said. “I won’t. And I’m sorry Draco threw you into the wall.”
“Under false pretenses,” Draco objected.
“You did do that, didn’t you?” said Theo, revelatory. “Hm. Well, I’ve made up for it by bewitching his mum. Speaking of which, how is Narcissa? Not home by herself, is she?”
“No, she’s off in the Maldives with Briselda.”
“She writes to me, you know. We have a lovely correspondence.”
“You’re about to have a lovely correspondence with my hand, if you take that tone.”
As the evening went on, they had more drinks, ate slices of a towering Yule Log that Fred had to cut with some kind of scimitar, and Seamus tried to launch a firecracker from the Tower window, the aftermath of which saw Dean Thomas sprinting through the crowd with a bucket of water. Daphne begged a dance off every boy at the table, starting with Harry, and working clockwise through Draco, Blaise, Ron, and Theo — or would have done, had Theo not excused himself. Blaise chivalrously offered a second round, but Daphne, with all the bravado of a queen, said: “No, let’s be modern. Hermione, fancy a quadrille?”
“I suppose so, if you show me how,” said Hermione gamely, and they departed together just as Theo returned to the table.
“Is Daphne a traditionalist, much?” Draco asked Theo, watching the pair of girls twirl in stumbling giggles across the floor.
“Hm?” He followed his eyes. “No. Not really. She’s not politically-minded enough for it.”
“So she doesn’t care that Granger is…”
“Well, even if she did,” Theo said reasonably, “it’s a party, and Daph’s your guest, and Granger’s your friend. There are rules to be observed.”
“That being said.”
“That being said,” he agreed, “Daph doesn’t care. Not when it comes to this stuff, anyway. She’s not going to breed with a mud— muggle-born, now. But if it’s someone like Granger, and they’re polite, and sentient, and everything—”
“What about you?” Draco interrupted.
Theo sighed and sprawled into his chair, one arm draped over the back. “Who knows,” he said. “I’m percolating on it.”
“Finish percolating.”
He rolled his eyes. “I respect Granger. All right? Is that the issue? Considering her circumstances, she’s done something rather remarkable, getting as far as she has, and I can see why you’re fond of her. I grant you, she’s very close to our level.”
“How do you mean, ‘close’? She trounces all of Slytherin in the class ranks, and you know it.”
“Pardon me. That’s not what I meant, and I confess I didn’t expect to be misunderstood, considering that I’m speaking to a Malfoy. What’s this about?” said Theo suspiciously. “I thought this was about Granger. It sounds like you want to talk politics.”
“It’s not politics,” he said irritably. “I’m not making some radical statement, I just haven’t a clue what you’re trying to say. Or if you mean blood purity, then come out and say that, but then you can’t say it’s ‘close’; she’s not less muggle-born just because her grades are good—”
“Draco, I don’t know what you want me to say,” said Theo incredulously. “It was a euphemism. I was trying to be polite. She’s your friend? Fine. I’m friends with some half-bloods on the gobstones team. It’s like your mum would say: you’ve got people, and then you’ve got politics. I’m not going to go after Granger, but I’m not going to pretend we don’t both know full well what I’m talking about.”
Draco pressed his lips together.
Abruptly, he said, “Is something wrong with you and Greengrass?”
Theo blanched. “What?” he said. “No. Did she say something to you?”
“I have it reliably,” he said, “that it’s rude for a wizard to refuse a dance to a witch.”
The boy deflated. “For one, that’s a Samhain tradition,” he muttered. “For two: nothing’s wrong between us. Things in the dungeons are just — confused, right now.”
“Has she insulted you?”
“No. Nothing like that. She wouldn’t, she…” Theo watched Daphne spin Hermione under her arm, with surprising dexterity, for a girl supposedly not used to leading. “Daph’s perfect,” he said.
“So you’re the problem,” said Draco.
“The soul of tact, you are, Draco Malfoy. Yes, you got it. I’m the problem. Hold your applause.”
“Well, fix it, then.”
“Good idea. And while I’m at it, shall I just order some nice weather for tomorrow, too? A spot of sunshine, an easterly breeze? Since I’ve got the catalog open?”
“You know what I mean. Go in and do something,” he said. “It’s pathetic to mince about. Whosever feelings you’re trying to spare, stop sparing them. Get it over with.”
Theo lifted his goblet. “Thanks, Coach.”
“You’re welcome,” said Draco impatiently. “And dance with her, for Merlin’s sake, you’re coming off as downright boorish.”
Theo blinked. “You know,” he said, “sometimes you sound uncannily like your mother.”
He stood up and straightened his coat. “Granger!” he called, cutting through the crowd. “Just what is that lovely creature on your arm? I believe she’s in my debt, and I’ve come to collect.”
Between the dancing, the drinking, and the physical impossibility of ending a Gryffindor party before three A.M., the celebrations raged well into the morning of the 26th. Draco started losing memories the longer after midnight the party went; later, he would recall leaving the party in a blurry vignette, drunk as he was not on alcohol but on exhaustion, braced against Harry and Ron at either shoulder so that all could keep upright. As they stumbled down the torchlit hallway, Daphne, half folded over Blaise’s arm, had pointed at something in the ceiling, and cooed, “Theo, look,” and Theo had said “That’s nice, Daph,” and then he fell back to talk to Hermione. And Blaise had murmured something in Daphne’s ear, and kissed her cheek, and she said — “Oh, you’re a darling, really,” but in tones of no happiness whatsoever; and in the next vignette, the Slytherins were gone, and he was tumbling into bed.
The days between Christmas and New Year’s vanished in the same idle fog they always did, and on New Year’s Eve, they woke up to find themselves on the verge of their vacation’s end. Hermione flung herself into her (already completed) homework, and successfully guilted Harry into following her example; Ron and Draco, immune to such tricks, played a game of wizard’s blitz chess on their side of the table. They worked thus in quiet for a few hours, silent save for the scratch of quills — Hermione’s much faster than Harry’s — and the rhythmic click-click of the chess timer. As Draco found himself marveling, for the fourth or fifth time, at the ruthless speed of his own downfall, Ron took pity and suggested they go to lunch.
Leftover pudding and Christmas crackers piled up on the tables, being removed from the kitchens in preparation of the night’s New Year’s Feast. Dumbledore, seated up at the high table, took up one of the crackers with an exclamation of delight, and offered the other end to Snape, who murderously complied. The cracker gave a startling BANG and revealed a plush beaver skin hat, which Dumbledore swapped for his own at once.
“Dig in!” he exclaimed, beaming.
As Draco helped himself to stewed onions, the doors of the Great Hall opened, and Professor Trelawney swept through, wearing a green sequined dress and a feathered hat. He’d heard complaints about the loony Divinations Professor from Harry and Ron, though they admitted that she was rather likable on account of being wholly easy to fool — their Divination homework was a joke. Hermione scorned her, but then, so did all Arithmancists to Divinators; it was something of an academic rift.
“Sibyl!” cried Dumbledore, rising to his feet. “This is a pleasant surprise! You have decided to join us…?”
Trelawney rarely appeared during school feasts. Draco thought she might have a touch of agoraphobia: her gaze flitted around the hall with trepidation, anxiously kneading her own arms.
“I dare not,” she said. “If I join the table, we shall be thirteen. When thirteen dine together, the first to rise will be the first to die…”
“Ha!” said Hermione, her voice low with scorn. “This is too much. There’s not twelve at that table — she can’t even count.”
Draco scanned the table. There were ten professors there, including Dumbledore, plus Filch, so it seemed Hermione was correct.
McGonagall, who quickly made the same deduction, said thinly: “What a happy accident, then, Sibyll, that we number eleven.”
Professor Trelawney did a double-take, her fingers digging tight in the flesh of her arms. “No?” she said, bewildered. “But where is dear Professor Lupin?”
“I’m afraid the poor fellow is ill again,” said Dumbledore, loading some turkey onto McGonagall’s plate. “Most unfortunate that it should happen on Christmas Day.”
Harry cleared his throat discreetly, and traded a look with Draco. The full moon came several days ago.
“But surely you already knew that, Sibyll?” said McGonagall, in delicate tones, sawing at her turkey.
Trelawney shuddered, lifting her nose imperiously away from McGonagall.
“Certainly, Minerva,” she tinkled. “But one does not abuse the All-Knowing Eye for such inferior matters… I should not like to frighten those around me by appearing to possess knowledge outside their ken…”
“Never worry,” said McGonagall crisply. “I can assure you, I fear that not at all.”
Professor Trelawney’s voice suddenly became a good deal less misty. “If you must know, Minerva, I have seen that poor Professor Lupin will not be with us for very long. He seems aware, himself, that his time is short. He positively fled when I offered to crystal gaze for him—”
“Astonishing,” said McGonagall, every syllable like a different deadbolt sliding home. Her inflection had even Snape looking minutely impressed.
“I doubt,” said Dumbledore, in a cheerful but firm voice, “that Professor Lupin is in any immediate danger. Severus, can you reassure us as much?”
“…Yes, Headmaster.”
“Good,” said Dumbledore. “Then he should be with us again by New Year’s. Now, would you convey unto me that scrumptious-looking platter of chipolatas?”
After lunch ended, Harry was quiet on the way out of the hall. By and by, he said, “D’you think he was alone on Christmas?”
“Who?” said Draco, still distracted with Trelawney.
“Si—” Harry caught himself. “Padfoot. It must have been pretty miserable, out there in the Shack. Without hot food or anything.”
Draco waited. He suspected Harry was working up to something.
“Sometimes,” he added, “during Christmas dinner, the Dursleys would have me stay in my room, so that they could eat as a family first. Then they’d have Dudley bring me whatever was left, afterwards. So I’d sit in my cupboard, and sort of… wait there, hungry. Not to complain or anything, I got food eventually, most of the time. But it was pretty rubbish, when it felt like, er… everybody was having a party without me.” He shoved his hands in his pockets.
“Oh,” said Hermione softly. “Oh, Harry. Of course it did.”
“So, erm,” he said, stopping at the foot of the Grand Staircase. “I actually — you lot don’t have to come with me, I don’t expect you to. But I’m going to go bring some food to Padfoot, and see if he’d like company. Since it’s New Year’s.”
Hermione made a noise of sympathy. Ron nodded, scratching his neck.
“But you’ll miss the party,” protested Draco. “The twins are planning fireworks—”
“I know,” said Harry, apologetic. “It sounds fun. Have a good time, really. But I can’t, if he’s…” He shrugged. “Sorry.”
“I’ll come with you, mate,” said Ron. He nudged Harry’s elbow. “Can carry more food with two than one.”
“Yes, I’ll go, too,” said Hermione mistily.
“Thanks,” said Harry gratefully. “You really didn’t have to.”
They looked at Draco, expectantly.
“What if I want to go to the party?” he said, almost whining.
“Then go,” said Ron easily. “No one’s making you.”
“No, but you’re going to look at me differently, and you’ll all think — oh, stop it. This isn’t fair. Fine, I’ll go, you harridans.”
“Seriously,” said Harry, “it’ll be fine if you don’t—”
“Like I trust any of you to have an adventure without me,” said Draco, darkly. “You’ll end up dead in a ditch by sundown. Let’s just go, shall we? Apparently my cousin’s wasting away as we speak.”
They visited the kitchens to load up on goose and roast potatoes and big tureens of pumpkin soup, and hiding these beneath their cloaks, they plowed through the snow down to Hogsmeade. Draco suggested it would be faster to take the tunnel under the Whomping Willow, but none of them could figure out how to approach without getting — as Ron put it — Whomped.
It took almost a minute of knocking before Sirius came to the door. He wore a slightly fresher shirt, and had combed about ten to fifteen percent of his hair, the rest of which remained matted. Nevertheless, the effect was appreciable. “What?” he demanded, at the sight of them, sans greeting. His eyes skittered over the array of faces. “What’s happened? Is somebody hurt?”
Draco, who caught a splinter in his finger on the way down, opened his mouth. Hermione stepped on his foot.
“Er, no,” said Harry awkwardly. He lifted a foil-wrapped platter. “We thought you might be hungry.”
Sirius stared at him. He had the drawn, tense expression of someone who had been handed a baby dormouse and told he had to sit in a nest of hungry snakes.
“I am hungry,” he said, in the softest possible voice.
“Right, yeah, that’s what this is for,” said Harry.
Draco wanted to fling himself to the ground at the whirling nexus of Stupid rapidly emerging on the doorstep. Gryffindors, he thought hopelessly.
“Can we come in?” he said, narrowly resisting the temptation to stomp his foot. “It’s cold as Merlin’s armpit out here.”
“Oh. Oh! Yes, yes, of course,” babbled Sirius, hurrying out of the way, and swept them into the Shack with the grandeur of a receiving king.
Efforts at refurbishment had been made since they last saw the house, and it was very nearly habitable. The worst of the detritus had been swept away, and the tears in the furniture were stitched over with clumsy patches. The chandelier remained dark, but a bevy of candles blazed from almost every flat surface, filling the room with a buttery and shivering light. Someone had even cut down a fir sapling and put it up in the corner, where it bent under the weight of a single ornament made from pinecone.
“Sorry about the chill,” said Sirius, hastily clearing some books off the sofa. “We can’t light the fire, people will see the smoke… would you like a blanket? We’ve got several—”
He fussed around, retrieving blankets of dinginess various, and pressed them into their arms. “Here, I’ll take that into the kitchen. Remus,” he called excitedly. “Harry’s here!”
“He is?” Lupin poked his head out of the kitchen. There were fresh dark circles under his eyes, and a new scar on his cheek, but he seemed in good spirits. He was wearing a cable-knit cardigan and a pair of thick-soled leather boots, with muggle jeans, and he held some kind of strange black pitcher with a cord dangling from it. “Oh, hello, you four. This is a pleasant surprise.”
“And he’s brought food!” Sirius jubilated. “Can we get one of the burners going, to warm it up? I know you said we had to be careful about too much lektrisitty—”
“Electricity,” said Lupin and Hermione at the same time.
“—but surely, a little more couldn’t hurt? For a New Year’s feast?” He held up the soup tureen, hopefully.
Lupin tipped his head this way and that. “Alright,” he said. “But we really have to start being careful about using the lights. I’ve jury-rigged some power from the muggle village down the way, but they’ll notice if the power bills really go up,” he added, mostly to Hermione. He waved his right hand, which was bandaged. “Burned the hell out of my fingers trying to do the wiring, too.”
Draco startled a little at hearing a teacher swear. He didn’t know why it surprised him, but it felt simply wrong somehow, like it ought to have been against the rules. From Hermione’s wide-eyed expression, she felt the same.
“It’s made a world of difference,” called Sirius gratefully, carrying the food into the kitchen. “Mostly I use it for hot showers — Aguamenti gets the job done, and everything, but when it’s been about thirteen years since your last warm bath, my God! I’m living in heaven.”
It was eerie to hear Sirius talk about the austere conditions of the Shack like it was some kind of luxury. But of course, after Azkaban, it must have been.
“So you’ve been camping out here together?” said Ron conversationally, leaning over the sofa back. “When Professor Lupin’s not at school?”
“I stay at the castle during the week,” replied Lupin, plugging the pitcher into a socket in the wall. He flicked a switch, and a bulb on the bottom glowed orange. “It raises fewer questions. Usually I come down on weekends. And, obviously, during full moons.”
“Been staying more during the hols, now you lot are off classes,” Sirius added. “We’ve been remodeling. You should see the bedroom upstairs; Moony worked wonders on it. Like new, I daresay.”
“As you can see,” said Lupin, gesturing amusedly at the fir sapling, “there have been heartfelt, if modest, efforts at holiday decorating—”
“It’s a perfectly good tree! Stop shaming it in front of the guests!”
“But since I’m the only one who can leave the Shack, our resources are somewhat limited,” he finished. The pitcher trembled, bubbling, and began to whistle. Lupin flipped the switch and took it back into the kitchen. “Tea?”
He served them Earl Grey in chipped ceramic mugs that smelled faintly of lye, and laid out a package of muggle biscuits that Hermione fell on at once with a cry of, “Jammy dodgers! I’ve missed these,” and when the food was warm, they laid it out on the coffee table and ate sitting down on the rug (the dining table having undergone a recent double-amputation, the circumstances of which Sirius loyally refused to report, but had Lupin blushing and muttering to himself).
Later, after watching Sirius single-handedly annihilate a legion’s rations of roast goose and potatoes, they sat around the coffee table among the gallery of used crockery, bathed in candlelight, lounging on pillows and swaddled in blankets. Sirius launched into story after story of Hogwarts hijinks from years past, including several that made Draco quite pointedly cover his ears, and Lupin brought out a bottle of firewhiskey that had probably been ancient already when his grandfather’s eyes started twinkling, of which he and Sirius both splashed ample shots into their tea when they thought the children weren’t looking. Ron begged a taste off Sirius, who with a furtive sleight-of-hand slipped it to him when Lupin stepped out for another blanket.
They looked like a band of bohemian peasants, Draco thought despairingly, but between Lupin’s more-than-occasional laughter and Harry’s brilliant, unyielding smile, he found himself unable to rue the shame of it. Happy peasants, perhaps. If there indeed was such a thing.
“Alright,” said Lupin, once the firewhiskey had been substantially reduced, and everyone was in a giggly, sedentary mood. “Padfoot, our guests have graciously brought us dinner. I think it falls to us to provide the show.”
“Hm?” Sirius was sprawled in contrapposto across Lupin’s lap, like a Greek etching. He hauled his head up. “Always game for a show, Moony. What have you got in mind?”
“If I recall correctly,” said Lupin, “I think Mary left her violin somewhere in here.”
Sirius rocketed upright. “That’s right,” he breathed. “Winter of ’77, wasn’t it? We hid it all in the storage closet—”
“—with the Ogden’s and Peter’s leftover stash—”
“Yes, I’ll go look,” he gasped, and darted out. When he returned, he carried a dust-ridden fiddle of weathered wood over his head, like a knight brandishing a sword.
“Aha!” said Lupin grandly. “Good woman, Mary!”
Sirius blew across the strings, lifting a cloud of dust, and wiped the bow on his pants. “Give me a tune, Harry,” he said jovially. “Chef chooses the music. Only fair.”
Harry, leaned forward eagerly on his haunches, said, “I don’t know — what can you play?”
“What can I play?” He scoffed. “Walburga Black didn’t piss a thousand galleons into music lessons so you could sit there and insult her soiled name. As I said: give me a tune.”
“Do ‘Farewell and Adieu, Spanish Veela,’ or ‘Blow the Troll Down,’” suggested Ron. “Or ‘The Lusty Hufflepuff.’”
“Do ‘The Unspeakable’s Kiss,’” said Draco, enjoying himself. “In C-flat minor.”
By now they were all snickering, but Sirius tossed his hair and prepared his bow with a flourish. “All ye of little faith,” he said slyly. In his smirk, there was nothing of the Azkaban escapee, the wanted criminal, the hungry refugee: merely a man, partly drunk, faintly handsome, with a shabby overcoat and a trick or two up his sleeve, piping out the first shrill trio of notes. The strings squeaked; Draco smirked, and Hermione giggled. Then Sirius took a breath, and all laughter snuffed out.
Draco thought he would be amusingly bad. To both his relief and his dismay, it was rather the opposite. When out of his mouth poured a silken baritone that shuddered pleasurably in his throat, booming, “My eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord,” Draco’s jaw came unhinged. So did Hermione’s, who grabbed his shoulder in excitement, and Harry’s beam split his face open. Lupin, lounging against the sofa, merely smirked.
Sirius finished “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” with a bellowing refrain of “glory, glory, hallelujah,” followed by “Love Grows (Where My Amortentia Goes),” a heavily ironic “If I Were a Rich Man,” and then shredded his way through a “Devil Went Down to Georgia” that had all five of them on their feet, shouting.
He pleaded out of ‘Modern Major General’ for another drink, and flopped down on the sofa, flushed and sweat-shiny, to passionate applause.
“Your turn,” he gasped to Lupin. “You sing something.”
“Me? You know I couldn’t keep a tune on a maraca.”
“Excuses, Moony! Rank cowardice! Sing one of those muggle songs.”
“Sure,” said Lupin, setting down his mug. “Happy to. Harry, have you ever heard ‘Henery the Eighth, I Am’?”
In fact, Harry had, and together, man and boy revealed in cheerful fashion that neither of them could carry a melody to save their lives. Harry listed against Lupin’s shoulder, his face bright from shouting, and when Lupin ruffled his hair, he looked like a boy who’d caught a falling star.
Hermione, half-swaddled in a blanket, murmured: “To think we thought they were going to kill us.”
“Shows you the importance of grooming,” he said. “Get him a hairbrush, it might have been a different conversation, off the bat.”
She hummed and snuggled deeper into the blanket. A spray of curls had come out of her bun, and she wrapped her hands around her mug, leeching warmth from its sides. The firelight turned her whole face yellow and shiny like the sun.
She had very small hands, Hermione. He could probably fit both of them in one of his own, and he wasn’t so much bigger than she was, really.
He frowned and stood up to go get some air. He was being odd. Heat-addled, probably, or some such nonsense.
On the porch of the Shack, he could watch the snow fall in a gray powder through the pitch-black night. He took a bracing breath of cold air and felt it wash all the nonsense out of him. He wondered where his mother was and what she was doing on a night like tonight. It was the first Christmas they’d spent apart in thirteen years. And without Dobby to take care of her — would Briselda be enough? She was only a housemaid. Perhaps he should have gone home, after all. If she had an episode, who would take care of her?
But he thought about the warmth inside, and the sound of Sirius’ violin, and Hermione’s happy shrill of laughter, and a wave of exhaustion swept over him. He was so tired — and he felt guilty for thinking it, but he couldn’t help himself — he was tired of having to worry about his mother. Why couldn’t he run away sometimes, and spend the holidays with his friends? What was wrong with it? Daphne and Blaise could. It wasn’t as though their mothers would fall apart without them.
He was a bad person for thinking these things, and he loathed the thoughts as soon as he had them. He loved his mother, and he took care of her gladly. He was her son. It was his duty as the last Malfoy. Freedom of choice was a poor man’s luxury.
The door creaked behind him. Sirius stepped onto the porch and said, “Oh. Hey, kid.”
Speak of the boggart, Draco thought.
“Hello.”
Sirius stepped out to the rail and lit a cigarette with his wand in the cup of his hands, muttering “Inciendo.” Smoke blossomed, and he took a drag with a cool sigh.
“If there’s one thing they don’t warn you about,” he said, “it’s how much you’re going to miss cigarettes. Food, hot water, human kindness — yeah, they warn you about those. But man, they don’t tell you how bad you’re going to want a cigarette.”
Draco made a noncommittal noise and turned to watch the snow fall. He wasn’t sure how he was supposed to respond to that, so he didn’t.
“Sorry,” said Sirius after a moment. He tapped out some ash, and it fell like black glitter on the snow. “Guess you probably don’t want to hear about all that.”
“I don’t mind,” said Draco. And he didn’t. He had gathered that it bothered Harry, from the way he reacted whenever Sirius mentioned it. But Draco was vaguely curious about it. He’d never been to Azkaban, and what he’d heard from his father had left more to the imagination than it told.
Sirius caught him watching and mistook his interest in the cigarette. “You want a drag?” he said affably, extending it between third and fourth fingers.
Draco considered. “Should you be offering?”
Sirius had the decency to cringe. “Right, sorry,” he said, abashed. He withdrew his hand. “Forget how young you lot are, sometimes.”
“I didn’t say no. Give it here.”
Sirius snickered and passed it over. Draco pinched it delicately between his lips and inhaled. The smoke scalded his throat and he broke into a messy cough.
“Classic,” said Sirius. “Not bad, for your first time. Here. You want to try a smaller drag, though. Just get used to the burn. It’s like drinking. If you’ve ever done that, which, er, you definitely shouldn’t.”
“Thanks,” he said, still coughing and watery-eyed. “Some role model you are.”
He laughed. “Don’t think you’re the first to notice. I’ve been corrupting the youths since I was a youth myself. Think your grandma still blames me for what happened to Andy.”
Draco took a more careful drag. It didn’t burn so much the second time, or the third, and by the time Sirius said, “Alright, don’t be a hog,” he had grown used to the sting in his throat. It was sort of like the feeling of being about to cry — pleasantly so, the good ache that said catharsis was about to follow. He didn’t fancy the taste, though. It left his mouth savoring of tar. He ran his tongue around his teeth and grimaced.
“In my year there was a whole trade of these going around the Tower,” said Sirius reflectively, tapping it out again. “A couple of seventh-year muggle-borns would load up from drugstores over the hols and sell them at a markup for anyone who’d buy. Minerva drove herself nutters trying to bust us, but what could she do? With something like that, it’s going to get into the castle anyhow. Plus, it was good for inter-house relations. The Slytherins couldn’t be too much of arseholes to us, because they needed us to get their fix.”
“The Slytherins bought from you?”
“Well, yes. Not like their rich daddies would fix them up with dirty muggle smokes, would they? At least back then, it wasn’t fashionable to smoke cigarettes. Thought it was a ‘muggle thing.’ Course, they still did it, they just called them something different — smokesticks, or cigarinos, something pretentious like that. I remember Cissa once cornered me in a broom closet and threatened to jinx my hair short unless I told her where I got my stash—”
Draco was startled. “My mother?”
“Oh, yeah,” crowed Sirius. “Wild, that one. More than anyone gave her credit for. She was head girl in her year, which was a bloody coup, since I can count on one hand the number of students who snuck out more often than she did — fair play to her, too, just wish it’d been for a better bloke than Lucius — oh, er. Sorry.”
“What is your problem with my father?” said Draco tightly. “Since you have one, obviously.”
“My problem with him is that he was a Death Eater,” said Sirius casually, examining the cigarette saddled between his knuckles. “Not that I would’ve liked him too much if he wasn’t, I’d still think he was one of the meanest, coldest bastards that ever walked those dungeons. Respectfully. But frankly, that’s nothing compared to the in-laws he got stuck with when he married in.” He took another drag and blew out. It occurred to Draco that Sirius was slightly tipsy; he was slurring his words a little, and Draco had never heard him talk this much about their family before. “To be fair — to be really, utterly fair — I did tell her she should marry him. Actually I told her, listen, you can’t do much worse than me or Reg, so you might as well hunker down with the first warm body that’ll take your skinny arse and hope for the best—”
“You?” Draco said incredulously. “You and my mother? What — together?”
“Yeah, that’s what I thought, too,” said Sirius, snickering. “But Mum always wanted a dynasty. I mean, she had two sons, Cyg had three daughters, I’m sure she thought it was perfect. One time she got sloshed and went on about this barmy dream of a double marriage, two-by-two, me and Cissa, Andy and Reg… can you even imagine? I know you’ve only grown up knowing your mother, but trust me, that would’ve been…” He shuddered. “I don’t know what Mum was thinking, really. She could barely stand me on a good day, and Cissa and I fought like hyenas whenever we had to spend a holiday together. That marriage would’ve killed one of us, and it probably would’ve been me.”
Draco couldn’t imagine his mother married to Sirius. He struggled to think of two people who would make each other more miserable.
Suddenly suspicious, Sirius angled a finger at Draco. “You don’t have any cousins on your father’s side, do you?”
“My father was an only child.”
“Good,” he said passionately. “Saves you the trouble. Course, I didn’t think Cissa would be the type to force a match, after the fiasco with me and her… Lucius might have done, though. That’s a bullet dodged.”
“I don’t know what a bullet is,” said Draco icily, “but I’m sure I would rather take it, or whatever you’re using it to represent, and have a father in the bargain.”
Sirius blanched. “Course you would,” he said, after a moment. “Course you would. Right. Sorry, lad, that was — that was out of line, for me. I always… you know, I made this mistake with Moony, all the time, when we were growing up? I’d make these remarks about — you know, being lucky that his parents didn’t care, or that they weren’t too involved in his problems… because I always thought, what a lucky bugger, I wish my parents would keel over and leave me alone. But that doesn’t mean it’s alright, does it.”
“No,” said Draco coldly. Then, after a moment, he said, “It’s fine. I don’t really care.”
“Nah, don’t cover for me. It was unsporting, as James would’ve said,” said Sirius casually. He held out the cigarette, and Draco shook his head. “He would’ve said… ha. Well, he would’ve said that it doesn’t matter if Lucius was a toerag or not, because I was a toerag all the time, and he’d still kick the piss out of anyone who wished I was dead.”
“How do you know?” said Draco dully.
“Because he was my best friend, and I knew him,” said Sirius, a touch defensively. Then, relenting: “And because he did say it. More than once. Said it a couple of times about Snape, come to think of it, after he started dating Lily. Boy, did the bird ever clean him up.”
“Potter’s mum?”
“Yeah. Lily Evans.” Sirius closed his eyes. “He was in love with her since the minute she set foot on that stinking train. Didn’t admit it for a year or two, but you could still tell. He once said—” He laughed, a humorless sound. “He was thirteen, and I said — I said, mate, why don’t you cool off a bit, see some other people, maybe she’s not the one, hey? Lots of birds in the world. And he looks at me like I’m the idiot, and he goes: ‘There’s not going to be other people.’ Like he already knew that was it, he was done for. Like he was doomed to it.”
“That’s silly,” said Draco, who considered all such romantic falderal to be the province of ninnies and girls.
Sirius snorted. “Rich,” he said. “Your dad bought your mum a rock the size of the Ritz and she wore it to Transfiguration all seventh year. Transfiguration! Waving it around like she wanted to put someone’s eye out. Silliest thing you ever saw.”
“My mother’s ring is tasteful, thank you very much.”
“It’s a rich man’s knuckleduster, is what it is,” said Sirius, enjoying himself. “As well as a formal license to shag. Which she very well knew. She had herself a twenty-four karat billboard that said ‘I LET LUCIUS MALFOY GET A LEG OVER,’ and she wore it with pride every day of her life. Don’t look at me like that, it’s true, isn’t it?”
“It’s my mother!”
“Aye, and that just proves my point, doesn’t it?”
Draco spun on his heel, deciding that the conversation was over. Sirius Black was, true to his reputation, a thorough scoundrel, and Draco had not the slightest interest in listening to his gossipy prattle malign the reputation of better wizards and witches than him.
“No, I’m sorry,” laughed Sirius, as Draco made to leave. “I’m only ribbing you. Tell me you didn’t get your dad’s sense of humor — Narcissa would have laughed at that.”
“I very much doubt that.”
“No, she would have,” he repeated, strangely certain. “Maybe not in front of you, or in front of Lucius, but she would have. Bella would’ve thought that was hilarious.”
Draco paused, his hand midway to the doorknob. “Would she?”
“Oh, yeah,” said Sirius, softly. “Bella was the bawdiest thing you ever saw. She drove her mother just about insane with it, but you couldn’t stop her with an army. She’d rock up to a party with your mum in tow, and they’d start riots.”
Draco closed his hand. His nails bit gently against his palm. “You don’t know what happened, I suppose.”
“I do, actually.” Sirius put out the cigarette on the railing. It issued a stream of smoke. “Word in Azkaban gets around.”
He waited for Sirius to say he was sorry, or make some such facetious gesture at sympathy. Sirius flicked the butt of the cigarette out into the snow, and did no such thing.
“I’ll say this,” said Sirius, when it became clear that Draco would not be the first one to breach the silence. “Based on an admittedly small sample, I think you’re very much a Malfoy. And that’s not… I mean, I’ll not pretend to stand here and say I’m thrilled to have another Lucius running around, but if you had to be one or the other, I think it’s probably better to have another Malfoy than another Black.”
“You’re a Black,” Draco reminded him.
“Not technically,” said Sirius, and grinned, flashing a row of yellow teeth. His canines were slightly elongated, like fangs, and Draco wondered if that had been the case before he became an Animagus, or if it was a residual effect. “The old woman burned me off years ago. I’m free.”
Free, thought Draco. What an odd way to say alone.
Something occurred to him. “Regulus,” he said suddenly, startling Sirius. “He was your brother.”
“Yeah. Prissy little git. Hogged the bathroom like you wouldn’t believe. Used every drop of hot water in the house, on what I don’t know, took ages to do his stupid hair—”
“He was the heir, wasn’t he?” said Draco. “After you were disinherited?”
Sirius paused. “Obviously, yes,” he said.
“And after he died, it passed to Bellatrix? Through Cygnus?”
Sirius shrugged. “S’pose.”
“Is there a chance he would’ve bequeathed it to somebody else?” asked Draco, thinking of Jugson in the Hogsmeade alley.
“What do you mean, somebody else? He died without kids.” Sirius leaned against the railing and exhaled steam into the night air. “You know the laws. Bet your mum drilled you on ’em soon as you could write.”
“But you’re certain Witherfell went to Bellatrix, that is. He didn’t have a… a will, or something like that.”
“Frankly, if he did, I’d be the last person you’d want to ask,” said Sirius indulgently. “Disinherited means disinherited, kiddie. Andy’s the only Black I’ve spoken to since I was sixteen years old.” He paused. “Except for you, come to think of it.”
“I see,” said Draco, frowning. “But do you think he would’ve — knowing him, would he have wanted Witherfell to pass to his cousins? Did he… like Bellatrix, much?”
“I don’t know if he liked anybody all the time he was alive,” said Sirius, amused. “He was a cold little bastard. Once offered me a quarter of a million galleons to abdicate my title and let him inherit. Said the best I could hope to do for myself was take the money and run. Of course, he was right, but that’s a cold comfort to a thirteen-year-old…”
The door opened, and Lupin poked his head out, wrinkling his nose against the cold. “What are you two doing out here?” he said. He lifted his nose and sniffed. Sirius shifted to cover the cigarette butt with his heel. “You’re not smoking, are you?”
“No,” said Draco and Sirius at once.
Lupin raised an eyebrow. “Right,” he said. “Anyway, Padfoot, you’d better get inside. Someone could see you.”
“For Merlin’s sake, it’s dark as pitch and snowing besides. Nobody’s spying at this time of night.”
“Then come in anyway, because we’ve got a present for you,” said Hermione, appearing under Lupin’s arm. She was bright-eyed and bright-cheeked from the combination of firelight and windchill, and it turned her whole affect pleasantly pink. She was wearing the coat that Draco had given her, and it suited her. “I told Harry he should be the one to give it to you. It was his idea.”
“Well, if Harry wants,” Sirius agreed immediately, and he followed Lupin inside.
When they came in, Harry presented them awkwardly with a folded white square of paper. Ron stood off to the side, arms folded, looking distinctly grumpy. “So, er, I did some thinking,” said Harry, “and I think you should have this. Ron and I talked it over, and I know he and I disagree, but I thought — well, it’s not really mine, is it? I got it from Fred and George, and they only got it by nicking it from Filch. So really, by rights, it already belongs to you.” He held it out, and Lupin accepted it with belated wonder, staring at it as though it were a lost treasure, paved in gold. “It’s, er, your map.”
Lupin and Sirius exchanged an unreadable look.
“Harry,” began Lupin, “this is really — you shouldn’t feel the need to give it to us, just because—”
“Moony,” said Sirius excitedly, “look at it. Look. The handwriting—”
“What?”
They bent their heads over it. As the curlicues of script unfurled, their faces opened up with identical glows of childish glee.
“It’s him! That’s his handwriting, innit, Moony? The tosser did his sevens with the little thing on them—”
“Did I really sign my name like that? Whatever for?”
“Oh, look how we did the passage between the dungeons, with that little asterisk there? Do you remember the argument we had about that? James insisted it was real, even though none of us could find it a second time…”
Harry grinned. He stepped to the side and nudged Draco. “We should give them some space,” he murmured. “I think they’d appreciate it if they got some time alone with… you know.”
“I still can’t believe you did that,” moaned Ron, as they absconded to the kitchen. “All the possibilities… the safety, the security… Harry, the blackmail we could’ve had…”
“It was the right thing to do,” Hermione said firmly, hoisting herself onto a kitchen stool, and Draco wondered whether it had been Harry’s idea or hers. She had wanted to get rid of it anyway, and he didn’t doubt that she would have jumped on the idea of returning it to its original owners. It didn’t irritate him nearly as much as he thought it would, even though he thought Ron was right, and it was a terrible waste.
“They’re professors!” said Ron, which was still a good point. “They can go anywhere they like! What do they even need it for?”
“It’s got my dad’s handwriting in it,” Harry said softly, glancing over his shoulder. Now and then a highly unprofessional giggle would float back to them from the living room, and Draco felt a twinge of embarrassment as well as curiosity. He couldn’t imagine what it could be like to hear your friend’s voice after thirteen years. He’d only been alive for thirteen years. To live in deprivation for that long, without anyone — not his mother, not his friends — he didn’t want to even think about it.
“Well, I hope they enjoy it,” Ron said firmly. “Because I’m never letting you live it down.”
“I’m quite content to let them have it,” said Hermione. “Professor Lupin won’t let it be used for anything scurrilous, like spying. And honestly, don’t you think it was the teensiest bit unethical — getting to see who goes in and out of the girls’ dorms, for example?”
“It wasn’t unethical, it was bloody cool,” said Ron, but before they could belabor the point any further, Lupin reappeared in the kitchen, his face glowing with laughter.
“Hello, you three,” he said, in such a deliriously happy tone that Draco thought someone might have dosed him with something. “Thank you. Thank you so — so very much, from both of us, for — for the most wonderful Christmas we’ve had in so very long.”
Harry blushed; Hermione turned bright pink with pleasure, and Ron sheepishly ducked his head. Draco lifted his eyes to the ceiling. This was all terribly middle-class.
“I told Remus you ought to stay over,” added Sirius, “but he won’t hear of it—”
“They’ve got to get back to the castle before tomorrow, or their prefects will notice they’re gone.”
Ron snorted. “Percy?” he said. “He hasn’t the time. That would require him dragging his nose out of Penelope Clearwater’s—”
“Ron!” hissed Hermione.
“Of course, you’re free to stay a while longer,” said Lupin, with an amused glance at Ron, “but I merely meant to offer that whenever you feel like going back, I’ll see you back to the castle.”
Draco opened his mouth to ask why, and then he remembered the dementors. It had been oddly easy to forget them. He was so used to being able to roam freely about the Hogwarts grounds, with only Filch to fear and worry about, that his memory had slipped over the nearby presence of a genuinely dangerous Dark creature. It just didn’t feel like something that could be true of Hogwarts. It was a fiction, a made-up thing. So long as he was in this warm living room, full of firelight and firewhiskey and laughter, it didn’t feel possible that a creature like a Dementor could be anywhere nearby.
They stayed a while longer, helping to clean up their plates, and set out when the snow started falling in earnest. Harry hung back for a quiet conversation with Sirius that ended with a deep, tight embrace, and perhaps a few tears, which Draco was man enough to turn away before witnessing. Then Lupin led them up the long tunnel beneath the Whomping Willow and cleared up the snow at the tunnel entrance with a sweep of his wand, escorting them out through the small passageway in the roots.
Aboveground, the snow had grown so thick that Draco could no longer see the castle through the flurry. Lupin carved a path in the snowbanks to the door with his wand, and Hermione lit hers with Lumos, and following the little pinprick of light, they hiked the hill up to the castle. As they passed the hippogriff paddock, Draco made out the vast dark bulk of Hagrid, swaddled in a fur coat the size of a small circus tent, leading the hippogriffs into a sheltered part of the enclosure. The trees shook and groaned under the volumes of snow descending on their limbs.
When they came at last into the light outside the Great Hall, Lupin deposited them and cast a quick Warming Charm, which dislodged most of the snow and frost that had gathered on their hair and faces.
“Thank you for coming,” he said, looking each of them in the eye in turn. His voice was hoarse with gratitude. “Really. You were under no obligation to do any of that, and it was… frankly, I think Sirius needed that, and so did I.”
“It was nothing,” said Harry. “Seriously. Don’t mention it.”
“You could mention it a little,” said Draco modestly. When Harry glared at him, he raised his hands. “What? I’m just saying, if my D.A.D.A. essay comes back next week and it’s not an O—”
“You prat,” Harry said fondly. He turned back to Lupin. “Don’t mind him, he’s joking.”
“Says you, Potter.”
“I’m afraid that I’m more exacting with my favorites, not less,” said Lupin, with a twinkle in his eye. “So I suppose I’ll let Draco wonder where that leaves him. The rest of you — all of you, really — get back to bed safely. If you run into any trouble, you just say you were doing some after-hours work for me. I’ll back you up.”
“Gosh, Professor,” said Ron, grinning. “Lying to Filch is against the rules.”
Lupin laughed freely. “Good,” he said. “Tonight, I’m a Marauder, not a professor. And it’s not Christmas unless we’ve had a little fun… Ron, Hermione, good night. Draco, good night. Harry: thank you, again, so very much. Merry Christmas to you all.”
And with a beam and a wave, he turned back, and disappeared into the blizzard, heading back in the direction of the Whomping Willow.
“He’s the best professor we’ve ever had,” said Ron faintly, almost wondrous. “I don’t care if he’s a werewolf. I think Dumbledore should hire him to teach everything.”
“You know, with the wolfsbane potion, the werewolf bit almost doesn’t matter,” Hermione added, as they filed back into the castle. Harry had draped the Cloak over their shoulders for good measure, and as they crept up the stairs, Draco almost felt like it was first year all over again — creeping back to the common room after hours, lurking in shadows, wary of Filch, fearing nothing scarier than a detention. “I mean, I’ve been doing some research, and there are some people who think that lycanthropy will be cured within the decade. Or, if it’s not cured, it’ll become one of those old diseases like smallpox, where it’s not nearly so serious as it used to be.”
“That’s a long way off, Granger.”
“Oh, sure,” she agreed, “but don’t you think it’s promising? I mean, the idea that someday — eventually — he won’t have to hide anything?”
“You’re an optimist,” he said, carefully, instead of what he really thought: which was that, considering the company Remus Lupin liked to keep, it was very unlikely that he would ever have the kind of life where he would not have to hide.
But then again, he thought, as they trundled through the portrait hole and into the warmth of the Gryffindor common room, who could say? It was Christmas, after all; the snow was coming down like the pitter-patter of little cat feet on the rooftop, and the smell of roast chestnuts and chocolate chip cookies wafted promisingly from the fireplace, and a warm, soft bed was waiting for him at the top of Gryffindor Tower. Nobody was dead, nobody was missing, and for once, they didn’t have to worry about Death Eaters chasing them around the school. It was their first good year at Hogwarts, their first peaceful year. He allowed himself to indulge in a healthy measure of optimism. Why couldn’t it be possible? On a night like that, even men like Sirius Black and Remus Lupin could look to the future, and dream of a world where they did not have to hide.
items for consideration:
-this is one of the longest chapters so far, i know, I KNOW, it is actually shamefully long. it looked so short in the outline. I am trying to release more chapters of a reasonable length so I am not putting out actual novellas as updates by the time we get into the longer books, which is a significant worry of mine.
-welcome, blaise zabini! man, writing blaise is a throwback. I remember a time when you could NOT read draco/hermione fanfiction without running into this dude. he was everywhere. nowadays theodore has come much more into vogue (I tend to blame The Cursed Child for that, although it’s kind of hilarious, because like… theodore nott has NOTHING in the original books. nothing. TCC comes along and is like “he was draco’s best friend” and it’s like, EXCUSE ME he was WHAT now)
-“draco malfoy had a secret best friend who hung out with him all the time it just wasn’t relevant to harry’s (who literally watched draco like a hawk for 6 years and spent one year following him around everywhere) story” ok. surejan.gif
-makes me feel very confident about shipping non-canon pairings, though, because it’s like yeah, to be honest, draco and hermione COULD have been having the Greatest Love Story of All Time behind harry’s back, it’s not like he noticed ANY OF THE OTHER insane stuff that was apparently all happening off-page
-but blaise! he was THE pick for draco’s best friend/narrative foil/Good Slytherin role. there was a whole subculture shipping him with ginny (also, anyone out there remember THAT? the two-by-two gryffindor girls and slytherin boys thing? it wasn’t my cuppa but now I’m remembering it I’m realizing how many fanfiction trends have come and gone since I started reading. [cue blade runner “like tears in rain” monologue])
-much like its chapter, this A/N has gone on far long enough. Will be back on Monday or Tuesday, if not before; I’d really like to get an update out on Christmas. And boys, this one has it all: quidditch! politics! more fred and george! the Ministry of Magic! and an introduction to my very favorite Ravenclaw.
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